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Which means the Fed will continue to let ~$90B out of its $9T portfolio of treasuries and agency-sponsored mortgage-backed bonds mature and be paid off every mo
by cs702 4y ago
Which means the Fed will continue to let ~$90B out of its $9T portfolio of treasuries and agency-sponsored mortgage-backed bonds mature and be paid off every month, without recycling the proceeds back into newer holdings to replace the old ones. The innocuous-sounding name for this process if "quantitative easing," but its impact may be far from innocuous.[a]
Consider: Every treasury that matures must be refinanced by the US Treasury by issuing new treasuries, and most mortgage-backed bonds are paid off before maturity via home sales financed with new mortgages. Therefore, bond investors other than the Fed -- that is, mutual funds, ETFs, sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, individuals, etc. -- will have to buy an additional ~$90B of newly issued treasuries and mortgage-backed bonds, give or take, every month, going forward.
And that means all investors other than the Fed must find ~$90B/month x 12 = ~$1.1T/year to buy newly issued treasuries and mortgage-backed bonds. In practical terms, they will have to withdraw ~$1.1T/year in aggregate from all other financial assets they own. The price of all such other financial assets, including "safe havens" like gold and Bitcoin, may not behave as predicted by any model!
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[a] You can see it has already started here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=RINc https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=RINc